Best Toiletry Bags For Travel
Small, dull and it improves every trip. The advice has barely changed; the liquid rules have completely.
Buy a hanging one. Bathrooms in hostels, guesthouses and campsites have no flat surface, or none you would want a toothbrush on. A swivelling hook that goes over a door or a shower rail is the whole reason this category exists.
What to look for: a wipe-clean or quick-drying lining, because something in here will leak; mesh pockets so wet things dry and you can see what you have; and the smallest size you can live with, since the bag expands to fit whatever you own.
The liquid rules, which is the real update. The 100ml limit is no longer universal. Airports running certified CT scanners now allow containers up to two litres with no clear bag at all: in the UK that includes Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Birmingham, and Dublin, Rome Fiumicino and Milan are among the others. Manchester, Stansted, Luton, Glasgow and Liverpool still enforce 100ml.
Which means pack to the stricter of your two airports. Flying out of a CT-equipped airport with a litre of shampoo and back through one that is not means losing it on the way home. The list changes as scanners are certified, so check both ends: UK rules and US rules.
The habit that sidesteps all of it: solid soap, a shampoo bar and toothpaste tablets. They are not liquids, they cannot leak into your clothes, they weigh less, and no security officer has ever asked about them.
Part of the guide to packing and organisation.